[Meetings 04] - The Oath and the Measure

by Michael Williams - (ebook by Undead)

  Unnerved, sure that what he had just seen was the first madness of starvation, Sturm seated himself in the high-backed mahogany chair from which he had first observed this forsaken room. Weaker now, his forehead and temples throbbing, he was no longer sure whether he could rise from it again.

  "So this is the end of the Brightblade line," he announced ironically, wearily. "Starved to death in the feast hall of a castle!"

  "If it is the end, then the line has descended to fools and schoolmasters!" a voice, gruff and barely substantial, proclaimed from somewhere in the rafters above the lad.

  Startled, Sturm tried to rise, stumbling in weakness and fright.

  "Which is not to say that didn't show up before in the bloodline," the voice continued. Sturm squinted toward the shadowy rafters.

  "Who are you?" he asked nervously, "and . . . and . . . where are you?"

  "In the balcony," the voice replied tersely. "With the rest of the commemorated."

  Then slowly a strange yellow-green light spread from the balcony across the gloomy expanse, and the astonished Sturm marked that the light rose from a helmeted, armored figure astraddle the balcony railing, a pale old man, his face unbearably bright, his features blurred and distant, as though seen through the globe of a lantern.

  "Who . . . who are you?" the lad stammered.

  The man was silent, leaning over the balcony like a burning masthead or fox fire, that green, gaseous light in the midst of the marshes. His clothing was dancing with firelight, dripping with an incandescent dew that tumbled to the floor into glittering pools like molten gold. Sturm held his breath at the man's strange menace and beauty.

  "Are you the one who . . . imprisoned me here?" he asked, this time more softly.

  "No," the man answered finally. His voice was resonant and deep and polished like old wood, and the dark mahogany paneling of the hall glowed greenly as he spoke. "No, I am no jailer. And you are the first to call this palace a prison."

  "Who are you?" Sturm asked again. The man stood motionless, a pillar of fire above him.

  "Look into your shield, lad, and tell me what you see."

  "I see burnished bronze," Sturm said, "and my face in the reflection."

  "Hold it up toward me, you fool! Then look at the reflection! Great Paladine's Beard! You Brightblades were never quick on the uptake! If Brightblade you are, as your shield and your self-pity tell me."

  As the man glowed and blustered, Sturm raised the shield, tilting it so that the bright reflection seemed to rest in the boss. With the green light gone, the man looked more pale, positively ancient, and Sturm could make out his features, his mustache, the coat of arms on his breastplate.

  Red flower of light on a white cloud on a blue field. The sign of di Caela, of a vanished name in a vanished house.

  "Old grandfather," Sturm proclaimed, kneeling on the rubble-strewn floor of the hall, "or grandfather of grandfathers, whoever you may be. Or whatever—whether apparition or saint or memory, I salute you as di Caela and ancestor!"

  Bravely, ceremonially, the lad extended his sword. Now the man in the balcony moved for the first time, his thin arm waving dismissively.

  "Get to your feet, boy, or whatever it is that we used to say when the Measure was measured and I had to put up with legions of your kind. This is a dining hall, not a shrine, and I'm Robert di Caela, not Huma or Vinas Solamnus or whoever else you're proffering swords to in this day and time."

  Robert di Caela sank through the stone balcony as if through dark water. First his glowing boots appeared on the underside of the platform, then his green leggings and sun-struck breastplate. Luminous and colorful as a great tropical bird, he floated gently to the floor of the hall. The oaken doors, Sturm's sole escape from the room, lay behind Robert, open and visible through the wavering transparency of his body. Phosphorescent weeds and mosses dripped from him as he approached, spangling the dark floor behind him.

  Instinctually Sturm backed away.

  "A simple back-country knight, I am," Sir Robert said. "Made even more simple by the fact I am no longer living. Though you've stirred the dust and rustled the curtains around here, I mean you no harm, boy—only curious to see you, to find out what brings a Brightblade back after all these years."

  Sturm backed into the chair and sat down with a thump. He knew his family tree well enough not to be surprised that a Di Caela lord was hungry for gossip and news.

  Sure enough, the ghost leaned forward, white face framed in a well-kept, elegant white beard. Robert's countenance was a pantomime mask, the dark mahogany paneling visible in the vacant sockets of the eyes.

  "A quest, Lord Robert—" the unnerved boy stammered.

  "Sir Robert," the ghost corrected. "Time was when we didn't priss and petticoat with conflated titles. 'Sir' was good enough for the likes of your great-granddad and for the likes of men every bit his equal."

  Sir Robert seated himself on a rickety bench, passing somewhat through it as he spoke, and settling with a puff of dust.

  " 'Twas a time when a quest was a great thing, lad! We went after enchanters! After lost civilizations and worms encircling the continent itself!"

  The ghost closed his eyes, as though he dreamt of those days as he spoke.

  "And what," Sir Robert asked bluntly, as his pale eyes flew open, "is the quest on which you're bound, little Brightblade?"

  As though he were charmed, enchanted, or starved past lie or even concealment, Sturm told the ghost the whole story, from the night at the banquet through his own foggy wanderings and his time of entrapment here in Castle di Caela. It struck him as he told it—how long and venturesome it had seemed in the doing, and yet how weak and simple and even foolish to recount.

  At the beginning of the story, Sir Robert listened intently, but his ardor didn't last long. His expression changed from intent to politely attentive, then abstracted and drowsy, then nodding on the edge of sleep.

  "Is that all?" he asked. "You've set out to meet an opponent no doubt your superior in strength and craft, and you've managed to get yourself locked into my estate before you're even halfway there?"

  Sturm flushed and nodded as Sir Robert laughed, a low thin chuckle.

  "Well?" the ghost asked, standing and hovering not twenty feet from the lad.

  "Sir?"

  "Look to your ghost lore, boy! What revenge have I asked for?"

  "None, sir."

  "And what unfinished business have I asked you to complete?"

  "Indeed, none."

  "Absolutely. As I see it, you've enough unfinished business for a lifetime of your own. What treasure do I have?"

  "Sir?"

  "What treasure, damn it! You've combed the premises from battlements to cellar. What am I hiding?"

  "Nothing, sir." The lad was weary of interrogation. He was hungry and tired.

  "Then what is left?" Sir Robert prodded.

  "Sir?"

  "What else do we ghosts do?"

  Sturm stood in silence. Sir Robert approached him, green and yellow and red.

  "We answer questions. I have returned to answer a question. No, I shall answer two questions."

  Arms outstretched, the ghost of Sir Robert di Caela hovered scarcely an arm's length from Sturm's chair. Hunger racing through him like fever, Sturm peered at the ghost intently.

  "I had always thought," the young knight ventured, "there was something magical and right in the answering of three questions."

  "Don't bargain with me, boy!" Sir Robert snapped. "It will be two questions or none. We stand on no foolish traditions here. Two questions."

  A thousand questions flashed through Sturm's mind as he stared at the ghost, questions historical, metaphysical, theological . . .

  But which questions?

  "Why you, of all the ghosts that might visit me?"

  "That is your first question?"

  "It is." Sturm regarded the ghost cautiously. Sir Robert hovered a good three feet off the ground, as though he were floating in water.r />
  "Why me?"

  "'Tis what I ask," Sturm replied.

  "Damned if I know," Robert replied. "Next question."

  "That was your answer?" Sturm exclaimed.

  "Is that your second question?" Sir Robert asked.

  "What? Well . . . no . . ." Sturm muttered. He fell silent, and the green light in the great hall shifted and deepened. Now the shadows of bench, throne, and rubble lengthened along the dusty stone floor until it seemed that the furnishings themselves had grown beyond human proportion.

  "I . . . I'm not sure what to ask," Sturm said finally. His mind lodged against the ancient stories of captured mages, bound to grant wishes—how they tricked their captors into asking for a sausage breakfast rather than immortality or infinite wisdom. Whatever the nature and design of the ghost before him, he was not about to let it trick him.

  "I think that the question is evident," Sir Robert said with a curious smile.

  Sturm gaped at the ghost and settled back into the chair. Sir Robert stood above him now, thin arms folded over his ethereal breastplate, eyes fixed on a ghostly distance. Slowly he lowered his gaze to the high-backed throne and to the young man, baffled and trembling, who sat upon it.

  "The question is evident," Sir Robert repeated. "I think you need to ask how to get out of here."

  Chapter 8

  Encounter by Moonlight

  "Very well. How do I get out?" Sturm asked.

  "I thought you'd never ask," Sir Robert replied with a chuckle.

  He should have known all along, Sturm told himself, for the ghost turned suddenly in stagnant air. Behind him, watery pools of light dripped from his locks and clothing, green and iridescent, as he made a path from the center of the hall, out the doors, and into the anteroom. Sword drawn and at the ready, Sturm rose from the chair and followed.

  The footsteps led, to his surprise, back to the cellars of Castle di Caela, where Sir Robert, floating ethereally ahead of him, rushed back beneath the stairway.

  "Bradley the engineer's work," he muttered. "So we could get the wine out after the worm tore up the cellars."

  The ghost flitted past a capsized wine barrel, headlong into the far wall, where he vanished entirely, leaving the stone surface shimmering with green light.

  "Follow!" a voice urged from the other side of the wall, and when Sturm set hand to the glowing stones, they pivoted suddenly, and he was bathed with fresh air and moonlight. He stepped from the cellar into the castle bailey, bright in the silver glow of Solinari.

  Sturm looked behind him. Surely enough, Sir Robert had vanished. Again he wondered why this ghost, of all possible ghosts in a castle long abandoned and no doubt richly haunted.

  Luin trotted across the courtyard from the stables, apparently no worse for her time left alone. She looked cared for, even well fed, though she was still saddled and bridled as he had left her when he thought his stay in the castle would be a matter of minutes.

  Sturm rifled through his packs, coming up with some jerky, some quith-pa, and some stale bread, all of which he wolfed down with no regard for manners or health. As he ate, Luin nuzzled his shoulder contentedly, and after a while, Sturm stroked her long nose and spoke to her, ashamed that she had been so long from his thoughts.

  "And how, old girl, did you keep yourself so well over these days? How did—"

  It was then he looked around and saw that the castle gardens were green, that grass sprouted up thickly between the stones of the courtyard. The grazing had been plentiful. Bright green the foliage was, not the pale of new leaf.

  He had been in the castle for a week. He was sure of it. The first day of spring had no doubt come, or was at best a day or two away. Sturm thought back to the Yule banquet, to the Green Man's stern warning that he keep the time of their appointment, and his thoughts spun with the dire possibilities.

  He would miss the time. And the tidings of his father, promised by Lord Wilderness, would go unheard, would remain unlearned . . . perhaps forever.

  At the thought of forever, a dull pain coursed through the lad's shoulder, and with it a sudden panic. For had not Vertumnus promised even more deadly things if Sturm did not keep the appointment?

  "The wound would blossom, and its bloom would be deadly."

  With no more thought of his comfort or of Luin's, Sturm Brightblade leapt into the saddle. Through the courtyard he clattered, reining and coaxing the horse beneath him, and out into the Solamnic countryside, where the moon tricked the landscape and the guideposts for travelers were confusing.

  Over his shoulder, he cast one last look at Castle di Caela, the maternal house of his ancestry. Somehow it seemed insubstantial, a part of the mist that had brought him to its gates. As he rode farther, he could see the two large turrets. The largest one had housed the keep and the hall and the ghost of Sir Robert di Caela—about that one he was no longer curious. But behind that tower lay the other, the CatTower, in which his great-grandmother's family had housed their eccentrics—sometimes their truly insane.

  A light burned in the topmost window of the CatTower, and holding the torch was a pale and elderly man, clad in ceremonial armor. Even at this distance, Sturm could make out the arms that adorned his breastplate.

  Red flower of light on a white cloud on a blue field.

  * * * * *

  Boniface was not far behind him. Sturm's escape from the keep had taken him by surprise as he nodded atop the southwestern bartizan, his pale eyes fixed idly upon the pale moon. He cursed softly, then cursed himself for cursing, as the lad climbed into the saddle and galloped off through the northern gate before he could descend from the walls and get to the stable himself.

  He hadn't expected the resourcefulness of the lad, who must indeed bear Brightblade ingenuity, for how else could he have escaped a castle so tightly locked and sealed?

  Lord Boniface Crownguard smiled to himself, leading his horse from the stables and into the bailey. Gracefully he mounted, with the thoughtless skill of a cavalry officer, and blazed out after Sturm and Luin, the stallion beneath him dark and fluid on the moonlit plain.

  Soon, however, he slowed his horse to a canter. It was only a matter of time. After all, he had seen to the contingencies. From here to the Southern Darkwoods, it was a gauntlet of traps and snares. In fact, the next surprise was fast approaching.

  * * * * *

  At a full gallop, Sturm and Luin charged north and east—or what Sturm thought was north and east—across the Solamnic Plains. The lad's hopes sank further with every swell and irregularity on the horizon: Who would have thought Solamnia was so wide, so incomprehensibly vast?

  Sturm closed his eyes as the wind rushed by him. He would never belong to the Order now.

  Downcast, his panic at last subsiding, he slowed Luin to a canter. It was then a breeze passed over them from his left, carrying upon it the faint, muddy smell of the river.

  Encountering the castle had spun about his sense of direction. He had been traveling south, away from the ford and the road to Lemish. The edged green of the Solamnic grasslands had swallowed the green of Vertumnus's road, and the lad had galloped for an hour, directionless across a directionless plain.

  Quickly Sturm reined Luin to a stop, stood up in the stirrups, and looked despairingly across the landscape ahead of him, bleak and featureless in all directions, save for a copse of evergreen here, a solitary vallenwood there.

  He thought of how, in this desolate spot, his failure and delay—perhaps even his death—would disappoint the Lords Gunthar and Boniface. He thought of Derek Crown-guard's gloating and mean joy. The other pages and squires would squawk and crow like a flock of ravens. . . .

  Where are the birds? That was it! Where are the birds?

  Sturm whirled and looked about him, his bafflement turning to a strange, rising hope. For this Solamnic spring, despite its warmth and greenery, was empty of birdsong. The plains were silent—as quiet as the death of winter.

  Sturm rose once more in the stirrups. At the edge of h
is sight, eastward toward the smell of the river, he saw more winter, and strangely more promise. For the green of the plains turned suddenly brown, and the mist hanging over the land was a winter's mist that sunlight could not disperse.

  "It's . . . it's still winter!" Sturm exclaimed, slipping back into the saddle. Suddenly the music rose in front of him, brisk and alluring and drawing him on across the wintry plains. Jubilant, he spurred the mare beneath him, and off they went, barreling eastward at a full gallop.

  He smiled to himself. The adventure was only beginning.

  Luin surged beneath him, hurdling an ancient downed fence as they galloped through farmlands, through fallow pastures. Always the music lay before them, coaxing them onward, and behind them, the greens of spring returned suddenly to winter's brown and ice-crusted landscape.

  Sturm laughed. It was easy from here. And so he was thinking when he felt the horse dip and stagger beneath him.

  * * * * *

  They were lucky not to be injured, even killed. It was some alertness in Sturm that caused him to rein in quickly, with such authority that the mare slowed to a walk at once, then stopped. He scrambled down to her right rear hoof and examined the damage.

  It had been no accident. Experienced beyond his years at horsemanship, he could tell at once that someone had loosened a nail, perhaps more, so that any sustained gallop could throw the shoe.

  "Why not earlier?" he asked aloud as he walked the mare toward a copse of evergreen, looking for shelter from a wind that once again had become fierce and wintry. "We raced through fog together, away from . . . from whatever it was. Over far rougher ground than this. Why didn't you throw the shoe then, Luin?"

  Unless . . .

  The lad shook his head. Someone had loosened the shoe at Castle di Caela. The same someone who had locked him in. Someone who was following him and trying to make him late.

  Sturm walked away the afternoon, grasping at possibilities, traveling vaguely eastward. Luin stepped gingerly behind him on a long tether, stopping occasionally to browse the dried grass. Just how the two of them would get to the Southern Darkwoods remained to be seen.